


Hold Still

by ProxiCentauri



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Blood, Blood and Injury, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 07:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8658160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProxiCentauri/pseuds/ProxiCentauri
Summary: Bashir is injured on his way to Ops during an emergency situation. Garak is the only one around that can patch him up and distract him until they can move him to the Infirmary.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written using one the many writing prompt posts floating around tumblr. The prompt was to write a fic that contained the phrase "Hold still." 
> 
> A small warning, this fic contains some description of injuries and blood.

Bashir skidded around the corner. Shrill alarms mixed with desperate wails in a terrifying cacophony. The hallways were painted red and the flashing lights burned a pattern into his brain. Vaguely, the air smelled of burning metal. He couldn’t stop. He had to get to Ops. He stumbled, nearly tripping over a body sprawled across the floor. For just a second, he slowed, casting a glance at their crumbled body. He had to tear himself away, fighting the overwhelming urge telling him to stay, to help, to heal. He turned and kept running. He had to get to Ops.

He rounded another corner into a smokey corridor and covered his mouth with his sleeve. Fire suppression systems were offline. He ducked low to the ground, but kept running. His throat stung. His eyes watered. He blindly bumped and stumbled his way down the corridor. His palms burned as he felt his way through the smoke while intense heat pealed down his back. And suddenly, it was all gone.

Bashir slowly emerged into consciousness. He looked up as the charred walls and looming doorways of the habitat ring came into focus. He sat, hunched against the wall on the floor. He tried to stand, but a hand gently pushed him back down. He struggled against it, but the hand only pushed back more firmly while another clasped his shoulder, pinning him to the wall. “Hold still.”

“I have to get to Ops,” Bashir mumbled. “I have to tell them. The aliens… low levels of helium gas is toxic to them.”

“They already know,” the voice assured him.

Bashir blinked a few times. “They do?”

“Yes. Now, stop moving.”

Bashir nodded and slumped against the wall. He used the back of his hand to wipe away the cold perspiration that accumulated on his forehead, wincing at the unexpected pain it caused. He looked down at his blistered hand, his gaze slowly drifting past that to the rest of his body, where it caught sight of his uniform full of singed frays leading to blood-sopped rags. As if flipping a switch, the rest of the pain caught up to him. The left half of his body seared in hot burns, doing little to mask the rhythmic throbbing of his right side. He sucked in air in a painful gasp.

“Where’s the nearest medkit?” For the first time, Bashir focused on the voice, looking up to find the source of it. Bent over him was a torn, sweaty, and disheveled Garak. He was breathing heavy, eyes wide and hands still pressed against Bashir’s shoulder. Bashir was panting as well. The metallic smell of blood was pungent in the air as well as in Bashir’s mouth. He subconsciously stuck out his tongue, trying to rid himself of it. “ _Doctor_ ,” Garak punctuated.

Bashir looked at him, finally registering the question. “There’s an emergency medkit in that wall over there, just around the corner,” he said, nodding down the hall. Garak went and retrieved it, returning with a tricorder in hand.

“What happened?” Bashir asked hoarsely.

“Some sort of explosion,” Garak said, voice tight. “It breached the habitat ring, but they managed to seal it. You sustained injuries.”

“What are they?”

“Second degree burns down your left side, a broken right arm, several broken fingers in your right hand, and a piece of shrapnel caught you in the abdomen. I’m no doctor,” Garak said, eyes glued to the readings on the tricorder, “but if you don't get treatment, it doesn't look good.”

“You’re certainly no doctor. You have terrible bedside manner, not comforting at all.”

“Doctor, I know of the Human idiosyncrasy of attempting to dispel stress with humor, but this really isn't the time.” He closed the tricorder. “We're sealed off in this hallway.”

“So what you’re saying is that you can’t get me to the Infirmary?”

“That’s right.”

“Ah.”

“Ah indeed.”

Bashir looked down, gingerly inspecting the gash in his abdomen, which was covered in a red, sodden cloth. Garak must have supplied a make-shift bandage and tied it around his waist. It explained the man’s ripped sleeve. Carefully, he lifted the blood-soaked fabric and peaked underneath. Whatever had cut him was gone and hadn’t lodged inside. It would have been better if it did, at least then it might reduce the bleeding. As it was, more blood would dribble out with any movement. He scrunched his eyes closed, taking a few sharp breaths.

“I'm afraid medicine is not one of the hobbies I've picked up over the years.” Garak said. "You'll have to instruct me."

"Are _you_ injured?"

"Nothing serious. The threat to you is more immediate."

Bashir nodded. "Did the tricorder show damage to any major organs from the shrapnel?"

"No."

“Okay, open the medkit and find the hypospray. Insert the vial with the blue ring around the bottom and administer it to me. It’s a drug to promote blood coagulation,” he explained. “It’ll help stop the bleeding.” Bashir watched Garak stiffly dig about in the medkit, brow knit. He took advantage of the momentary silence of to toss out another joke, which Garak would no doubt describe as another useless, stubborn, and very Human characteristic. Or maybe it was just a characteristic of Bashir. "Had time to dabble in isolinear rods, but not nursing? Do a lot of information processing as a gardener?" Bashir said, angling his chin away to make room for the hypospray.

Garak humored him with a quick beat of eye contact and a coy raise of his eye ridges. "You'd be surprised."

"Oh, I'm sure. You always manage to surprise me, Garak." Bashir flashed him a weak, suggestive smile back. “Now, find the vial marked with a purple ring and administer half a vial of that to me.” Bashir turned his face away again, sighing with the hiss of the hypospray.

“What was that one?” asked Garak.

“Pain medication.”

"Did it help?"

“Not much,” Bashir admitted. “But I need to stay lucid to walk you through this. Find me a blue, mesh bandage now.” Garak picked one out, holding it up for inspection. Bashir nodded. “Remove my bandage and apply that one instead.”

Garak knelt beside him, Bashir doing his best to hold still while he worked. Garak would glance up to Bashir's face from time to time as he worked. "Great, just toss the old one aside; we won't need it anymore. Make sure the new bandage makes contact with the skin," Bashir encouraged. Mercifully, Garak’s deft fingers were gentle on the open wound, but Bashir couldn’t stop from hissing in pain as the bandage was pulled away from his gash. His left hand closed into a fist, finger nails digging an indentation into his palm. He closed his eyes and Garak paused, letting the wave of pain past. Breathing heavily, sticky sweat coating his face and back, Bashir nodded for Garak to finish.

"Alright, now find the splint for my broken arm and the white vial of ointment and apply it to my burns."

First, Garak produced a rigid, silver casing, gently helping Bashir slip his arm into it. The sickly sensation of his fractured bone jolting around with every move was enough to make Bashir squirm. Once the split quelled the disturbing sensation, Bashir was finally able to relax the tension in his arm, allowing it to lay safely within the confines of the splint. But he coiled back up as Garak pressed into his tender skin with his padded, ointment-coated fingers. He bit his lip, each point of contact creating a new burst of pain.

When it was all finally over Bashir nodded, swallowing. “Okay. Okay, now all we can do--“ he sighed-- “is wait.”

Garak's eyes flicked over him, no doubt taking in his waxy and pale visage. “That's it?" He sounded unconvinced, frustrated even. "Surely there's something else in here that can help you.”

“Nothing short of a medication that will knock me out, and I’d prefer to stay conscious until we can get to the Infirmary.” Bashir offered a small, apologetic smile. “No offense to your skills as a doctor, of course.”

Garak shook his head and put his hands up, efficiently tucking away the anxiety in his voice and trading it out for something more cool and playful. “None taken. After all, a simple tailor is a poor substitute for a trained, medical professional. I'm sure a doctor, such as yourself, would fair just as poorly at altering a traditional Vulcan tunic.”

Bashir laughed then winced as he agitated the wound in his side. Garak lurched forward, eyes flashing over him in concern, but stopped short, waiting for Bashir to give him some sort of instruction. “I’m fine. I'm fine.” Bashir sighed into the wall and eyed Garak’s tattered body. “But what about you? Do you have any injuries that need treatment?”

Garak waved the question away, falling from his kneeling position to one sitting flat on the floor, legs crossed. “Some scrapes and bruises, but I’ll live.”

Bashir frowned. “Give me the tricorder.”

“Doctor, I assure you there is no need-“

“Garak," Bashir said sternly, giving the Cardassian a look like a mother scolding a child for acting out. "Doctor’s orders.”

Garak glanced around with exaggerated incredulity as if there was someone there to offer a sympathetic nod or an exasperated shrug and take his side in this. Bashir deepened his disapproving frown, and Garak handed the device over. “Very well, but I must tell you this is entirely unnecessary.”

Bashir wiped his clammy hand over his thigh before accepting the tricorder. “We’ll see about that,” he said, flipping it open. It beeped innocuously as he waved it up and down the seated Cardassian, who smiled pleasantly in its direction.

“Well?” Garak prompted, smugness hedged into his sparkling eyes.

"Some minor abrasions and elevated heart beat, but, other than that--" Bashir flicked the tricorder closed-- "you’re fine.”

Garak’s smile breached into a toothy grin. “Ah, just as I told you. Now if you only believed me in the first place, you could have avoided this whole embarrassing business.”

“A wonder that I didn’t believe you.” Bashir bent forward to hand the tricorder back, gasping and body catching as he went too far.

Garak stuck out a hand, grasping Bashir's shoulder, and Bashir stifled a moan as they slowly lowered him back. Closing his eyes, Bashir slicked back his sweaty hair, allowing his head to slump against the wall as he took a few, shallow breaths.

“Doctor, are you certain there’s nothing else in this medkit I can use on you?”

Bashir carefully shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. He opened his eyes and looked at Garak. “But there is something else you can do.”

“What’s that?”

“Distract me.”

“Distract you?”

“Yes, talk to me. Tell me something. Tell me about the customers you get in your shop, tell me about Cardassia, tell me about your work as a gardener.” Bashir’s eyebrows lifted a faint, amused smile on this lips. “Tell me about your past, and I’ll guess which parts are lies.”

Garak tilted his head in empathetically. “You may find that a harder task than you think, my dear.”

Bashir poked his chin out defiantly. “You’re not the only one who’s been watching over these last few years.”

Garak leaned back and smiled fondly. “Very well. I think the most appropriate place to start is when I worked on an unassuming Cardassian merchant vessel under the command of Bivia Tedajt.”

***

“Of course it was my vacation when the body was discovered. I only found out about the accident when I returned four days later.”

“Lie!” Bashir cut in.

“Quite right! Very astute, Doctor. My vacation was, in reality, only three days long.” Bashir rolled his eyes.

“Lie,” he reiterated.

Garak turned his palms out. “It is nothing but the truth.”

Bashir stuck his head forward with a playful sneer. “And _that_ is a lie too.”

“Julian!”

The pair looked up from the ground to find Jadzia Dax, her lips parted in relief. She dashed over and knelt by Bashir’s side, a nurse following close behind her. Garak stood and politely backed away to give them more room.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said, laying a gentle hand on Julian’s knee. She pulled out a tricorder and started scanning him herself, but looked up with a scrunch of her nose. “Well, mostly okay.”

She snapped the tricorder closed, letting the nurse treat him. “What happened?”

“I was in my quarters when the station was invaded. The aliens even reached the habitat rings. I managed to figure out a weakness of theirs, but communication was down.  I was on my way to Ops to tell Sisko what I learned when I was caught in an explosion of some sort. Since then, we've been sealed in this corridor.”

“So you’ve just been stuck here the whole time?”

“Afraid so.”

“Well, you’ve managed to hold together fairly well, all things considered.”

“I’ve got Garak to thank for that.” He nodded down the hallway, and Jadzia flashed him a genuine smile.

“I guess I’ve got him to thank for that as well.”

Garak bowed at the waist. “No thanks is needed. My life was already indebted to the good doctor here. I was simply repaying the favor.”

The nurse finished their ministrations and cut in, saying, “We’d better transfer him to the Infirmary now.” They turned to look at Garak. “Him as well.”

"The transporters are still down. We're gonna have to walk," Jadzia said, flashing him an regretful smile and giving his knee a squeeze.The nurse ducked under Bashir’s good arm, slowly standing and hauling him to his feet while Jadzia laid steady hands along his back to help him keep his balance. After Bashir took a moment to dilute the new wave of pain that surfaced, the group started on their slow journey to the Infirmary.

“I _have_ to tell you what happened in Ops while you were gone. You’ll never believe what happened to those aliens. Kira actually managed to lock them in Benjamin’s office! You should have seen the look on their faces when they realized!" Jadzia's eyes were glowing with excitement and she laughed, Bashir joining in, laughing at her enthusiasm.

“If anyone could manage that, it's Kira. I can't wait to hear about it, but there's a story I need to finish first.” He squirmed, looking back at Garak over his shoulder. “The Gul's brother wasn't really responsible for his death. It was the mother, wasn't it?”

Garak flashed a knowing smile. “Close, my dear. You'll just have to wait and hear.”


End file.
